Friday, February 08, 2008

News and Notes

"...[T]he towering achievement of Things Fall Apart has been to become arguably the most influential work of fiction by an African writer. Since William Heinemann Ltd. first issued it in London, the novel has sold about 11 million copies in some 50 countries and as many languages. (This month Anchor Books will issue a 50th-aniversary edition.) In the United States, in an era of multiculturalism, it has become a fixture on college and high-school reading lists — for Americans, the quintessential novel about Africa...."

"[When the novel was published,] literary conceptions of the continent were still steeped in reductive romance, primitivism, and colonial sentiment. Providing an expansive alternative to those conceptions was, to say the least, a mighty accomplishment for an author still in his 20s."